The Ultimate Selling Sales funnel’s primary mission is to ensure you investresources effectively, and at the right time. And, it’s the source and foundation for accurate sales forecasting.

Lets explore the illustration! A prospect, as in QUALIFIED, has met critical criteria in order for them and you to advance to the actual selling process. It’s serves as a robust filter of your database, pipeline and wish list!

Anything short of mutual definition and agreement on INTEREST, MONEY and DECISION, defaults them to being a suspect (yes, they’re not a qualified prospect ). And if they are unqualified on any one of the three critical requirements, they are piped out of your funnel as not qualified. They may be in the awareness, information and knowledge stage but they have yet to establish a true acquisition process.

Warning! Present to anyone in these stages will result in a Non-Decision as they are not yet prepared to acquire.

Focus on having clear, straight-forward expectations and agreed to next steps by all involved parties and watch your success rate soar!

One final note: although rare, it’s possible for a qualified prospect to be revert to a being reclassified as a Future or back to being a suspect. For example, unexpectedly; an uncontrollable event such as funding, earnings statement, new management or acquisition surfaces. So they go back to being a suspect unless, there are mutually agreed to actions with dates. In these rare cases, they would be classified as as a Future. Example! They cannot buy now due to a penalty clause but have agreed to issue a PO on a specific date when the penalty clause expires. If it’s call back and lets see how things are in 6 months or a year. They can only be a suspect.

Now you can create a meaningful and accurate sales forecast and earnings for you.